Anti-communism

Anti-communism is a political ideology espoused by the far-right, conservatives, centrists, and some moderate liberals, with the common goal being the opposition of communism. Anti-communism has been an ideology shared by the fascist Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler, the US Republican Party and US Democratic Party in the United States, the UK Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, and most center- or right-wing political parties across the world.

Anti-communism was first notably seen in the Russian Empire, where the Bolshevik movement was born in 1903. The Russian government put down a communist uprising in 1905 and deported several communists to Siberia and other remote regions, but the Russian Revolution of 1917 changed politics forever. Communist and socialist groups sprung up across the world in hopes of creating an egalitarian society, while nationalists and fascists sought to put them down. In the Weimar Republic of Germany and the Baltics, the Freikorps paramilitaries were formed to fight against communist uprisings, while the White Army was formed in the former Russian Empire to fight against the Bolsheviks. Most communist uprisings would be put down by 1939, when the Spanish Civil War destroyed any chances of a communist state existing in Western Europe.

However, the Soviet Union in Russia set up numerous satellite states across Eastern Europe after the fall of fascism in 1945, and many post-colonial countries would adopt communism or socialism as their ideologies from the 1950s to the 1990s. The Cold War saw the Western Bloc oppose communism through proxy warfare, coups, and - at times - direct military intervention (such as the Korean War and Vietnam War). The end of the Cold War in 1991 led to the downfall of most of the communist regimes, but China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Nepal, and North Korea (nominally) maintain communist regimes. Since the end of the Cold War, most European nations have moved towards adopting social democracy, a mixture of liberal and socialist ideals, and most communist nations have moved towards a state-run capitalist economy, with no true communist society existing today.